White House, Members of Congress Come Together to Tout Progress on Energy Savings Performance Contracts

ESPCs are a hot topic this week! The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) convened a summit Wednesday to discuss progress on President Obama’s energy savings performance contracting (ESPC) goal of entering into $2 billion worth of ESPC projects by the end of 2013. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), and Congressmen Cory Gardner (R-Colorado) and Peter Welch (D-Vermont) joined CEQ Chairwoman Nancy Sutley and other White House officials for a dialogue on ESPC best practices and a discussion of the future of ESPCs in federal and state facilities.

In these times of tight budgets and sequestration, commercial building owners and federal agencies are looking for ways to reduce operating costs and stretch every dollar further. In a recent survey conducted by the Institute for Building Efficiency, 51% of building owners cited either availability of capital or other financial criteria as their top barrier to investing in energy efficiency projects. ESPCs allow cash-strapped building owners and federal agencies to improve the energy performance of their buildings with no up-front capital expenditure.